Wednesday, February 29, 2012

rossini

Gioachino Antonio Rossini

(29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868)Born into a musical family, this Italian singer, pianist, and horn player became the most popular opera composer of his time. He began playing in public at the age of ten and had his first opera produced at the age of eighteen. By the age of twenty-one, he was the toast of Italy; and at twenty-three he became the musical director of two opera houses in Naples. Over the years he composed thirty-nine operas, as well as many other pieces. During the last thirty years of his life, he went into seclusion and composed relatively little. He died at the ripe old age of seventy-six from pneumonia at his country house in France on Friday, 13 November 1868. He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.